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Microsoft Told to Pay Tax on License Fee
MissingRainbow writes "To avoid paying taxes in India, Microsoft wanted a court to believe that it is selling its product and that there are no royalty payments involved. Their own EULA worked against them in this particular case however as it states, "the product is licensed, not sold". The court ruled against them."
I suggest two new tags - 'pwndbyowneula' or 'canthaveitbothways' (although the old faithful 'haha' adequately expresses the extent of my sympathy for MS).
Oh, and for those wondering, RS 700 crore == 175 Million USD. (a crore is 10 million).
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
How appropriate, that in India, the birthplace of Karma, Microsoft gets whacked with a hefty dose of it.
Anybody want my mod points?
He who lives by the EULA, dies by the EULA
leave the slashdot gui alone!
You said billion twice for emphasis, even though it clearly says million even in the article's damn title.
This must mean that 2008 will be the year of Linux on the desktop!
Totally offtopic, please mod me down, but 2008 is the year of Linux on the desktop already!
Asus can't make enough eeePCs to meet demand, other retailers are coming out with cheap linux desktop products, Linux is finally being offered as an alternative by system builders.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
HP is rolling out openSUSE on their computers I do believe. And WalMart has been selling Linux desktops.
WalMart is about as mainstream as you can get.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Maybe instead a Borg Bill should be portrayed as Pinocchio.
So, in other words, less than Microsoft pays per year for power alone. I don't think this is going to make much of a dent in their budget.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
That would be the "Total Cost of Pwnership!"
Damnit! I have gone for YEARS without using the term or anything similar simply because I thought it was stupid. Now look who's doing it?
That even MS employees don't read the EULA...
So do terrorist software pirates pay tax? Nope http://w3.bsa.org/thailand/press/newsreleases/IDC-Study.cfm
Well look who is in the same boat...
realkiwi
The amount they have to pay works out to about 28 hours of revenue.
Great piece of evidence in any Microsoft-unfair-business-practices lawsuit, establishing their basis, motive, and degree of integrity.
The Wolfpack Project: BitCoin + Crowdfunding = Political Accountability
Have both been selling machines with Linux for many years. HP offers Linux on, I believe, nearly every box they sell and drivers for nearly every printer.
Instead let's talk instead about the eee PC from ASUS, and the clones of it, and all those hot new cheap mini laptops and mobile internet devices based on Intel's Atom that won't run Vista.
Microsoft had better pay their taxes while they still can.
XP dies in June. Unless they extend it every last one of those boxes is going out the door with Intel's MobiLinux or a distro that supports that platform. Let's talk about BMW, where Linux comes standard with many models.
Forget Linux on the desktop. 2008 is the year of Linux in your pocket, in your dashboard, in your cable box, on your lap and bringing the third world online without contributing too much to global warming. Desktop? What do you need a desk for any more? Next year that question may read "What's a desk?"
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The article implies that there neither sales tax nor company income tax (of the MS subsidiary/partner) exists in India. Is this the case? Is the tax on royalties the only tax income the Indian people get from software peddlers in India?
Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button
Seriously, misrepresenting news in order to get people to read it? I'd expect that from Fox or CBS, but posting this rubbish on slashdot, that's just pathetic.
I don't think so. They are saving time, trouble and money by not supporting the problems of non-apple hardware. They are a hardware vendor after all. By not supporting competing hardware they automatically rule out 100s of different configuration problems. All one has to do is look at the fight Mozilla is having keeping up on security / bug issues in FireFox since it was first released for Windows to see that elimination of a subset of problems saves trouble for the developers.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
The only thing that slightly worries me about this: if the EULA is what is causing MS to pay the tax, then in paying the tax, MS can clearly say that the EULA is valid (in India at least) as the government has demanded legal taxes based on it.
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet;
A chrysanthemum by any other name would be easier to spell
Agreed. Maybe if they made Slashdot look like this we'd actually get some work done?
Python coder | PyQt Applications | Writer
So, in other words, less than Microsoft pays per year for power alone.
Yeah, but usually those power payments are made to politicians, not courts.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
I thought it was just an oversight. Safari for Windows is important because it's the same browser that the iPhone uses and getting Safari marketshare up on Windows was an important way to improve iPhone compatibility and allow web developers to test pages easily.
Apple don't need a Eula to limit installing when standard disclaimers cover all the configuration problems.
the more they over-think the plumbing the easier it is to stop up the pipe
Your sig agrees with your sentiment.
I don't know much about the demographics of the area, but I really doubt that a signifigant portion of the population are meth addicts, nor probably a large percentage of those evil poor people. I rather doubt that this tax money would be quickly sent to that small portion of meth addicts (or even those damn people poorer than you), but would probably be distributed to other programs, like... hmmm.. roads, hospitals, police, fire, etc... You might, though, have to share these with those damn slackers, which is sad, since I'm sure they would rather not be burdened with more elitist, faux bourgeoisie, greedy rich people bandying about their self-interested ideas of entitlement.
Why should corporations pay taxes, or at least obey the law? The society in which corporations are enmeshed are largely responsible for their prosperity, and thus they owe some level of entitlement towards the society as a whole.
I'm not a socialist, I just think some people fail to realize that in many cases poverty is outside of the control of the individual. Either that or they have to decide this to justify their own crass greed. But then again I'm one of those loons that puts human life, health, and happiness above little green slips of paper.
down mod at will.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
For the record, the full name for these "points" is "basis points". See Investopedia: basis point and Wikipedia: basis point.
Korma whoring will get you everywhere, my friend
which is totally what she said
What really disappoints me is how greedy a company can get. They lie to avoid paying taxes in India when they make billions in revenue a year. I guess making billions isn't enough for them.
I like the Ajaxiness.
This is Slashdot. It bloody well needs to be completely usable without Javascript. What do they think this is, ZDNet?
The treaty is based on the model treaty of the Organization for Economic Development ("OECD"). Article 7 of OECD treaties says there is no withholding tax on sales, while Article 12 says that there may be up to a 15% withholding tax on royalties.
As much as I might like to say "ha ha, its MS", there is a real question here. Does the customer buy the package software, or the license to use the software?
This issue won't work in India's favour. They may collect more tax but Indian business will be hurt as we would charge extra if there is withholding tax. Also, Indian companies can expect the same treatment when selling their software to other countries, as well.
Treaties are a two way street.
I hadn't thought about it before, but considering what the RIA/MPA/BSA and such are costing us in court time and enforcement, perhaps it's time to crank up the royalty tax rates to offset the costs (and I would assume that payments for permission to use patents should also count as "royalties", yes?).
Certainly a substantial increase in the royalty tax rate should perhaps be a part of any "intellectual property" "reform" bill as proposed by those who profit from it (and perhaps this would encourage people to go back to actually SELLING things and slow the stampede towards the "bribe someone for permission to use under restricted conditions" model...)
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
Do we have to expect and then forgive this kind of obvious shysty behavior by our corporate citizens?
Companies are petrified of "leaving money on the table", another way of saying that if they don't try to glean the profits By Any Means Necessary then another company will, and they will fail. Or be quickly punished by Wall Street.
And we are all okay with this business model based on desperation, clawing and scamming and cheating...or at least pushing the edge of decency to absurd limits.
So here we have a company, a country, a civilization that values and rewards cheating the system as far as it can get away with...which is only known in hindsight, as the raw and unapologetic greed that is required to succeed in this world inevitably leads to certain kinds of blindness.
You know the type: not really seeing the poverty of your fellow humans, the destruction of the environment, the wars and civil strife...we sort of acknowledge that it's there but we refuse to honestly admit the causes and will not genuinely cooperate with the solutions.
Because doing that might result in us "leaving money on the table"...for someone else! God forbid someone else rush in and fuck over the people in search of profits instead of us!
Suffice to say, this is a perfect example of a company knowingly gaming the system, because everyone expects (nay---demands!) them to in order to survive.
Great world, you assholes! Competition is good, sure. But is it so good that we forsake our humanity?
(nope, I'm not mad at MS...why should they pay a tax that they might not have to pay? But how do you know if you have to pay it? Well...just try to not pay it as hard as you can. You will soon have your answer!)